Obviously teachers will include their political views imbedded in the subjects they teach.  Of course, there needs to be some limit on teachers indoctrinating students. However, schools should be assessed and funded on how well their students do on reliable and valid standardized assessment instruments.. One way to make this fair for lower-class schools is to consider the growth in achievment scores. This would provide incentives for teachers and administrators to focus on the academic achievement of students and not on other things.

The above is true.  With no incentive to improve the outcomes of the students they’re teaching, the staff has time to move on to their political bends.  Of course I agree with some of what they say, however, during the Harris government, teachers were wasting a lot of classroom time pushing their hatred of the Conservative government onto their students.  I was on the parent council and got a lot of complaints about kids coming home angry at their stupid parents because they didn’t agree with their teacher’s way of thinking.  There were even anti-conservative policy petitions in the schools.  As a parent council member I always asked the principal to please tell the teachers to stop using classroom time to push their political agenda, and to immediately remove the petitions from the school. 
I explained that political petitions do not belong in publicly-funded institutions:  because they are supported by tax dollars (people of all political stripes) they should remain neutral…
In the catholic schools, I’m not sure.  My first thought was:  we know we’re knowingly paying for a Roman Catholic system, and they do teach their beliefs to their students, but do petitions go too far?

“With no incentive to improve the outcomes of the students they?re teaching, the staff has time to move on to their political bends.”

Difficult to carry on productive conversations when this is your starting point.

When I complained to our children’s school board a few years ago that they had each been shown the Michael Moore propaganda films by several teachers over the course of a school year —even by a gym teacher as part of gym class! —I was told that teachers are given “creative scope” to teach within, and that the board considered these many film showings to be within that scope.  I called it indoctrination.  But then again, Geography class in high school is no longer about land masses per se, but more about the current social science view of political correctness.  How did that happen? I was shocked.

And then too, the so-called community particpation events all have pre-selected causes that students are to raise money for. Simply by way of these having been chosen sends a message to students that such causes are virtuous.  I have taken exception to a few of them over the years, however.  Our schools are heavy-duty indoctrination grounds, at every level.  It is “cool” to be politically involved —most often in the left of centre causes —and most teachers are no exception when it comes to involvement.  They “spread the word” in their classrooms, supposedly in the name of creative teaching.  No one stops them.  We even had an elementary school Principal once who sent home a letter to parents about the third week of December one year, saying that students were forbidden to give gifts to their teachers at Christmas, but thet they were heavily encouraged to bring in a donation for the Principal’s favourite charity, instead.  I wonder who got the tax receipt from all of those donations?  Most families didn’t dare say no.  And most of them had already purchased teachers’ gifts that they couldn’t give.  So indoctination goes on in the schools all the time these days.  It is just a matter of who is involved in what topic of indoctrination at what time. 

Oh, and there are many out there who think themselves noble by trying to find reasons to point a finger at the Catholic Schools.  It’s their agenda.  As if they don’t have their own pet causes to force into students’ minds. 

In the name of fairness, concerning the blog account about Catholic School teachers here, an anti-abortion stance is and always has been part of Catholic doctrine, and was certainly part of all Christian denominations’ doctrine until very recently.  To state this to Catholic school students (usually of high school age) is considered religious education.  Some Catholic High Schools offer students the opportunity to join anti-abortion rallies, just as other high schools offer various kinds of community involvement that might be considered political — rallies and events for Global Warming initiatives, for instance.  Global Warming doesn’t even have the heft of being part of an established religious doctrine (or maybe it is), but students are encouraged at school to act in its name.

So we have to be very careful what we consider indoctrination, or not.  At least in Catholic schools, parents have formally sanctioned the passing on of Catholic beliefs to their children —by virtue of enrolling them in a Catholic school — whereas no one asks, it seems, about all of the other indoctinating activities schools have become involved in.

“Some of these campaigns I agree with, some I don?t. And therein lies the rub. Because most likely, your set of approved campaigns is going to be different from mine. And who is to say which of us is right?” 

Couldn’t agree more.  And one person’s teaching may be another’s indoctrination.  High school presents even more problems.  For example, if you are teaching World Politics and you have the students research and discuss communism - some may say that is indoctrination (especially since some of you think we are all ‘lefties’).  The curriculum of the World Religions class includes Islam, Buddism, Shintoism and Hare Krishna - is that indoctrination?

Even teachers’ best efforts can be misconstrued.  Our drama teacher noted that much of theatrical presentation is derived from religious ceremonies.  Prevented from discussing (let alone practicing) religion in class, she came up with an ingenious idea:  make up her own ‘ceremony’  - non religious, light candles, turn off lights and have students move to certain spots.  Great idea - the kids got the idea of the mystical experience the audience feels in a darkened theatre.  That night a parent phoned the principal to complain after her daughter told her what had happened - the mother accused the teacher of practicing witchcraft in class.

Many objections (like those raised above) come from a lack of understanding of the events and their context.  Just think of how you phrased the situation: “...several teachers in a publicly-funded Catholic school gave their students the option of signing a petition…”  Well, to begin with, if it were several teachers, I would hardly think it was in class - we don’t normally have more than teacher/class.  Could they have been the staff advisors for a club - like a right-to-life club?  You should also note the word ‘option’ - they weren’t forcing students to sign the petition.  If the signatures were not coerced - why assume malfeasance?  Furthermore, as far as I know minors cannot sign a petition and have it officially recognized, so we are talking about high school seniors here.

My thoughts exactly about petitions in schools—do minors’ signing them do any good?
I’ve thought further about petitions in catholic schools which reflect their values, and I suppose petitions don’t belong in any publically-funded institution, since these institutions belong to the public—not the employees.

There are those who would argue that the implicit purpose of public schooling is socialization. I think that there is a fine line between socialization and indoctrination, except that one is often used in a pejorative way to refer to positions that we might not hold.

But, I would like to pick up on the term that Malkin has used to describe students: vulnerable. Students are vulnerable when they are open to being assaulted or wounded. Is this what we believe about our children? Do they really walk around in need of protection from the ideas of the adults in their lives. If so, then we need to teach them in a way that allows them to be protected from ideas that might be harmful.

But, if our children need to be protected from the very people that we hire to protect them, we have a problem.

I would agree that young people can be impressionable and easily influenced. But vulnerability, to me, implies something more sinister about the actions of these teachers, and others who carry their views of the world into the classroom.

I also agree that it’s very difficult to separate our beliefs, our stories and our teaching. Difficult as parents; difficult as teachers. But the idea of vulnerability causes me to think about this challenge in a different way.